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Do you think primarily in English? | mattmaroon: Einstein famously thought in pictures, but very few humans do. |
Do you think primarily in English? | lacker: I don't think people are capable of introspecting with enough accuracy to tell if they think in English. When you try to describe how you think, you might say you think in English, but perhaps you just don't have words accurate enough to explain how thought really works. |
Do you think primarily in English? | plinkplonk: context: Most educated Indians are trilingual (the provincial language - there are more than 20 of these, with a few hundred distinct dialects- , Hindi (the national language), and English. I can read and write French and German but I don't really think in these.I find that the "voice in my head" speaks different languages at different points in time. While programming I use mostly English. I find that sometimes when stuck on some programming problem, trying to explain/talk about it in another language often "unsticks" it. No idea why, really. |
Do you think primarily in English? | jd: I'm Dutch and I often find myself thinking in English. If I work in English all day I context switch and English becomes my "default" language. When I wake up the next day my first thoughts will then be in English. Until I consciously switch back I'll continue to function in en_us mode.It can be really annoying at times. I constantly mix up proverbs and language constructs when I'm context switching, I often know a word in only one of the two languages and can't think of a good translation, and so forth. And more often than not there is no 1-to-1 correspondence between English and Dutch words, so it's easy to get frustrated knowing exactly what you want to say, but being unable to say it because the words don't exist in your native language.I don't think it matters much whether you think only in English, in several languages, or in pictures/emotions. A game I sometimes played as a kid was to take a concept and repeatedly think of more succinct definitions for it with a friend. And the cool thing is that despite getting the original definition wrong, in the end you always end up with a definition both parties agree on. People rarely think about the exact definition of any every-day word, and yet people are capable of intuitively picking the "right" definition from a list.To completely derail this thread I'll challenge you to define the word "chair". It's not "something you sit on", because you can side on a couch and a couch is not a chair. Nor is it "something you sit on with legs", because then it could be either a stool or a bench.The point is, when you think of the word "chair", you're not thinking in English. You're thinking about the concept chair, and that's one you can't define without some effort. And defining it in words is completely unnecessary because you know what a chair is. It's no different for the word "empathy".ps: Your definition empathy doesn't pass the sociopath test. A sociopath notices somebody else is hurting, and knows what pain feels like, which is for your definition sufficient. But textbook sociopaths lack empathy. So empathy must be more than mere recognition of an emotion. Yes, this is nitpicking, but that's kind of the point. |
Do you think primarily in English? | tel: In my experience I think in English 90% of the time. When working problems requiring a lot of spatial insight, I pretty easily switch to something more visual and visceral. This also happens when I'm drawing and sometimes when I'm playing music.I'm also learning Chinese. It is anything but an easy language to learn, I'll say, and I don't feel like I'll be thinking fluently in it anytime soon. That being said, if I concentrate and force myself to think in Chinese I can get by with a huge hit to rate of thought. It's something I practice from time to time despite the frustration. |
Do you think primarily in English? | warwick: Sure, ask this while I'm sitting here with a Linguistics text studying for a final. This post is going to be a bit long.Empathy is a hard word to bring up an image of because it's meaning is largely connotative rather than denotative. On the other hand, there are many words ('Book', 'Clarinet', 'Web Browser', and all the other things I can see from where I'm sitting) for which it's simple to form an image. The words are largely symbols which denote an entity.Now to drift from the topic:I think in either my native language (English), or in images. Flashes of insight tend to come as images. Generally the hardest problems I work on are design situations rather than algorithmic, so I think images are the best way for fully formed answers to pop into my brain.I'm also unilingual. Canadian English is the only natural language where I regard myself as being fluent. I speak some French (Quebecois), but by and large it's parroting full phrases when I speak. My reading comprehension is sufficient that I can interpret arbitrary French when the vocabulary is in my limited lexicon, however my grammar is quite weak when it comes to forming new phrases. My formal education in French was poor, as I was taught essentially arbitrary vocabulary by non-fluent teachers. All through high school I read French in much the same way as you speak Spanish, by treating another language as something that I was just lacking the mental dictionary for.I lived in southern Quebec for a couple of years while attending University. Though it was an English town and school, a fantastic amount of the signage was in French.Some time ago a friend and I were driving through Montreal. More accurately he was driving and freaking out about the traffic, I was navigating and translating the road signs for him. Having been exposed to French road signs for a couple years I'm competent in that area. I realized that I wasn't translating into English in my head when I started getting frustrated at how _slow_ it was to translate the signs to him. I would read them, have to find the equivalent concept in English, and then say it. In the end I just started directing him where to turn instead of reading him individual signs. The layer of indirection doesn't last forever. One day I'd like to be able to speak the language like I can read the road signs. |
Do you think primarily in English? | rokhayakebe: It depends. English is my third lamguage. French is the second. Wolof the first. I think in all three depending on the situation. When I first moved to the States I would speak in French in my head and translate it in English from brain to mouth. As the years went by, I started to automatically think in English. When I speak with my mom I think and process all the info in Wolof. If the conversation becomes more political or academic with her, then I start to process the information in French because that is the administrative language where I come from. |
Do you think primarily in English? | strlen: I am bi-lingual: English and Russian (having lived in US since 1996). Often times, however, I can't quite tell whether it is Russian or English I am thinking in. |
Do you think primarily in English? | kennon: I'm actually learning Russian right now, while living in St. Petersburg, so I think about this a lot. The program I'm in is intended to take us to a high level of fluency-- Superior, or Level 3-4 on the various scales. As a result, there is a lot of talk about thinking in the target language. I, sadly, still feel like I very rarely do this. I can handle very simple contexts rapidly, but I don't know if I'm actually thinking directly in Russian, or simply using the lookup table you describe at an extremely rapid rate. When I read texts or hear other people speaking in Russian, I almost always still reform the sentences into English in my head.Some of the other students seem to not have this problem. By their own admission, they're able to operate in many, if not most, contexts completely in Russian-- though, of course, there's no way to know what this means. They mention dreaming in Russian, for instance. This hasn't happened to me yet. There are times when I can intuit what someone wants without actually translating word for word, but usually that's just because I didn't catch all of their words to begin with.It might be background-- I'm the only engineer, the others are all Russian majors. Maybe they have less need of precise rules and translations. It's very hard for me to adopt a new Russian phrase without having found an English equivalent for it. It might be time spent learning the language. The other students have been at it 2, 3 times longer than I have. It might just be that I'm older: 30, as opposed to 22, 23. When I was in the Peace Corps, the volunteers in their 50s and 60s had huge problems learning the local language. So it's probably true that, at least for most people, the older you get, the more ingrained your modes of thought. I guess that means that the earlier you can expand this, the better. |
Do you think primarily in English? | markessien: Nobody thinks in English or any language. I know this, because I actually thought about the problem you are describing when I was a child of about 8 - I was faced with the problem because some guy said he thinks in words. I realised that I didn't think in words, but in concepts.Later, when I was much older, I realised that parts of my thinking seemed to be words - but just seemed. With some effort, it's possible to remove the words from the thinking and just think in concepts - the words are automatically placed on your thoughts, but you are not thinking in them.Let me explain again : You have a thought, and then the words matching that thought are created. Then you reprocess those words as input. You can also skip the reprocessing step, but for that you have to avoid a fatal mistake - the replacement for words is not images. Rather, you need to simply not try to inteprete the concepts you are working with in your head.For example, if I say 'empathy', you know what it means without a dictionary definition of empathy. If I write out a sentence - the man felt empathy with his begging son, you can imagine the situation without needing words or pictures, and only when the entire concept is finished do you convert it into words. I.e, in the sentence above, you are not breaking empathy down, you are breaking the entire sentence down.There is a simple way to discover how to do this - think of some random object. Then think of something related to that object, then something else related to it. For example Book, Page, Letters, Reader. And so on. Just go through a list of interconnected things, but as you do so, try actively to avoid putting words on the concepts. After a while, also try not putting pictures either. You should see your thinking speed up significantly as you improve. |
Do you think primarily in English? | randomwalker: In case you are unaware, the question of how much of our thinking is language-constrained has been extensively studied in linguistics and cognitive science. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sapir-Whorf_hypothesis is a good starting point. Anecdotal evidence is great, but you should also look into the studies.My personal perspective: I am natively trilingual, as an Indian person. (someone else mentioned this as well.) My two Indian languages have fallen to near-complete disuse, to the point that I'm only borderline fluent in them. Nevertheless, growing up with two or more languages forces a child to seek common denominators, and thus think in terms of imagery.This is definitely the case for me. As soon as I focused on the word "empathy" for a few seconds, I actually had two different images come to mind. These were both exemplars, as in, specific instances of people in my life showing empathy, one from recent memory and one from long ago. That's the trick with imagery -- it can often be crude, and only cover a special case of the concept, but it still does the job much better than words. You mention precision. Precision can in fact be a disadvantage, given the inherent ambiguity of human thought.This is learnable. It gets harder as you age, but never impossible. To improve thought imagery, try this. Buy a ginormous whiteboard and cover one wall of your room/office with it. Draw everything. You might initially have to struggle with coming up with any sort of image. Your perfectionism, and your poor perception of your drawing skills, if you suffer from those, might hinder you. Try and lose your inhibitions. When you're at your computer, keep looking at the whiteboard once in a while. You want to get to the point where if there's a concept you're working on over a few days, every time you think of that concept, you should immediately be able to see the corresponding picture in your mind's eye. Also keep reams of paper around. Again, draw everything. I'll even start drawing on napkins if a thought comes into my head that I need to draw and I can't find paper. Hopefully, you will eventually be able to 'draw' effortlessly in your head.Here's a solution for your "lookup table" problem. This is a technique that is used in teaching accents, but I have also used it in learning new languages. Pick a character. It could be a friend, or a character from a TV show, just anyone who speaks Spanish (preferably exclusively). When you're trying to speak Spanish, be that person. Imagine you're them, to the extent possible. It will make it a lot easier to push the English out of your head.Finally, subvocalization (i.e, reciting sentences to yourself). Also (un)-learnable. Start gliding your eyes over the text rapidly. At first, you won't understand anything. Try the same sentence again. Force yourself not to say the words. If it's too hard, go fast enough that you can't possibly say the words. Keep doing that until you derive at least some meaning from the sentence. Start from there, and hopefully you'll get better slowly.These are all things I've used to various degrees. Thinking in English is not a big problem for me, but more imagery helps, no matter what. YMMV, but hope this all helps! |
Review My WebApp | Angostura: A fascinating WebApp, and really useful to schools and students, I would have thought. I've only tested it for about 2 minutes, but I already found one odd ommission - try searching for Ethene and see what you get.Also it says that yo can search by common name, which is fabulous, but you might want to open the system up to crowd-sourcing so that people can contribute common names and attch them to molecules.A search on Deoxyribonucleic acid, for example produces no hits. |
Do you think primarily in English? | iamelgringo: I was raised in Central America by US parents. At 4, I knew more Spanish than English. We moved back to the US when I was 14. Since then, I've lost quite a bit of my Spanish, but I'm still fluent.When I was younger, I would think in Spanish and occasionally dream in Spanish. I don't do that any more. I've been in the US for so long that the transition to thinking in Spanish requires effort.But, yes, there are concepts and shades of meaning in one language that are hard to communicate in the other.I think that being monocultural is much more constraining than being monolingual, however. When you grow up between separate cultures, you're not only acutely aware of multiple ways of talking. You're also acutely aware that there are multiple ways of living, of relating to people and family, much different sets of priorities, completely different ways of problem solving and of being. It's hard to appreciate unless you've made a big cultural transition like emigrating or growing up multicultural.If you want to get past it, move to another country for a couple of years. |
Do you think primarily in English? | davidw: I think in Italian occasionally, but of course English is my native language so that's what gets used most. When programming, it's English only, and speaking Italian doesn't come as naturally. I started trying to think in Italian as a way to practice the language, a long time ago, and found that it was pretty effective. |
Do you think primarily in English? | weiser: My view is that people think in (1) words (2) pictures and (3) concepts. How much of each depends upon the individual.As for myself, I think mostly in pictures and concepts, very rarely in words.I am bilingual, but since I rarely use words for thinking, languages don't matter as much. |
Do you think primarily in English? | dimitar: I think in the language that I am using or have experience on the subject - my native language is Bulgarian, but sometimes I think in an another language when I face a concept I experienced in another language. Those cannot be only natural languages but also formal ones - its too confusing and slow to translate mathematical, psychics, programming or any notation into a natural language.I sometimes only know English terminology on a subject and I am forced to think and even use English words.. I consciously try to avoid that. Usually people with only ostensible knowledge of English AND the subject pollute their native language with unnecessary foreign words. Unfortunately those people are very common here and annoy me daily, but on the other hand its fairly easy to separate the signal from the noise by looking at how often such fancy words are used.I really recommend this essay in which the unnecessary use of foreign words is only part of a bigger problem:
George Orwell, "Politics and the English Language," 1946 |
Do you think primarily in English? | lst: The language/culture influences quite a bit.I know this quite well, because I grew up with a mother language quite different from my current language (both are not English), so learning other languages (preferably really different from your mother tongue) is always a mind opener.I made this experience: while slowly growing into my 2nd language/culture, I extended my horizon, without loosing what I learned so far. So, it's not that I'm now inside my 2nd language, and lost my 1st experience/capabilities, but: my horizon is widened, I'm more logic and more flexible in both languages, and in my whole thinking process.BTW, I never explicitly think in the words of my human language, words may accompany the thinking process, but thinking is so complex and fast, that you would not be able to follow directly; it mostly 'happens'... |
Do you think primarily in English? | Eliezer: Hazoo fzeem! Wallenmacher bibble zark zark wachoon gra faZAMble! |
Do you think primarily in English? | gur2: Just practice more Spanish.I am a Spanish native speaker who later learned English, French and Italian for work. In my case, I don't have the feeling of translating sentences/ideas/concepts to English in my mind. They just come naturally, or don't come at all. When they don't come naturally, it's normally because of a lack of vocabulary, so I switch to Spanish and lookup that word/expression in a dictionary. |
Scalable framework for web apps? | thibauld: Hi,I just blogged about the issue of choosing the right software stack to build your web app a few days ago. You can read it here : http://thibauld.com/2008/11/web-application-implementation-s...And I'm currently writing the next post about code architecture... I'll probably post it today.
Cheers,Thibauld |
Do you think primarily in English? | known: Language = Culture (for e.g Japanese) |
Review My WebApp | lpgauth: Some chemical names are displayed as regexp... Not sure if all chemist understand them :)ex: 1$l^{6}-thiacycloprop-2-yne 1,1-dioxide |
Do you think primarily in English? | ChaitanyaSai: Native and non-native (even if fluent) speakers recruit different areas of the brain when speaking or comprehending a language. This is now well known from fMRI studies.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi... : From the abstract (Listening to comprehensive but non-native language seems to demand more networked co-processing.)
Another one:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi...Non-native speakers recruit more brain regions, suggesting that more "concepts/whatever" are being invoked in the formulation or parsing of a sentence. With this in mind, it would seem that even people who assume they are thinking in a certain language, are only accessing a post-conceptual process (language formulation). Conceptual relations between objects or other concepts may still have been put in place in a ways influenced by the language in which you picked them up.For the same reasons as above, verbal encoding of empathy is probably not the succinct representation the brain uses; you just happen to have conscious access to the verbal encoding only. I would guess though, that something like the Implicit Association Test would uncover more. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Implicit_Association_TestAs for your Spanish, you will stop using the English-to-Spanish pre-processing crutch once you get more fluent (with practice and repetition). |
Do you think primarily in English? | danw: I think in which ever language I have been using the most recently. This varies between English, Welsh, French, Japanese, etc. |
How do you deal with a boss who is stuck in the past? | cperciva: A significant portion of the application has already been coded by my boss ... his many years of C experience ... I am continually refactoring his code ...Several responses come to mind here:1. Unless you're working for a very unusual startup, your time would be better spent writing new code rather than refactoring existing code.2. You speak of experience as though it's a bad thing. It's possible that your boss knows what he's doing.3. Ultimately, he's the boss. If you don't like his code and he doesn't like your suggestions, either quit or be fired.How the the HN community deal with these situations?I think the usual solution here is to quit and start our own companies where we don't have to put up with a boss we don't like. :-) |
Do you think primarily in English? | saundby: English is my primary language, but I also picked up a fair bit of German and Danish as a child from my grandparents.I mostly think in English when programming, but when I get into either specific relationships between elements of the program or high level conceptualization I tend to slip into German. Names for objects often come out in Danish if I don't stop and translate them into English.In college I had some unfortunate partners on a programming project who were subjected to code written late at night and very quickly with comments in both English and German and with many Danish identifiers. Fortunately they were up to the task, and as they were Italian and Norwegian with English as a second language, they gave as good as they got with the multi-lingual coding.Our professor requested a full English translation to accompany our source when we turned it in. |
Do you think primarily in English? | noahlt: While it is possible to "think in pictures", language is required to form complex thoughts.A long time ago, people who were born deaf were called dumb. This is because, being deaf, they were never able to learn a language, and therefore could not form complex thoughts. |
How do you deal with a boss who is stuck in the past? | CatDancer: How about recommendation #7 of http://paulgraham.com/head.html ? |
How do you deal with a boss who is stuck in the past? | sarvesh: Have you spoken to him about it? Explain to him how your time and in turn your startup's money both of which are precious at this point are being wasted. If he still didn't get you are in the wrong boat my friend, quit. |
How do you deal with a boss who is stuck in the past? | pasbesoin: 1. Make a best effort to reach a mutual understanding. Don't assume you are right; question both sides.2. (Prepare to) Move on. If your boss is truly holding things back, staying will increase your frustration while limiting your development. Been there, done that. |
Shall we hasten the demise of IE6 by charging more? | theantidote: Definitely charge people extra for making intranet sites IE 6 compatible because they have control over that and they should upgrade. Otherwise you can consider a small surcharge for IE6 on internet sites but it's kind of unfair to punish your clients for the browsers their customers use because they can't really do much about it. On your own site more ads are okay along with copious upgrade links and links to Firefox/Opera.Funny story: I've been working on a project for the past 2 weeks and I basically finished it in Safari and I was getting ready to do a long day or two of debugging for IE6 when I opened it up in IE6 and lo and behold it was (nearly) perfect! I was so happy, tears nearly ran down my face. |
How do you deal with a boss who is stuck in the past? | SingAlong: I've dealt with such a guy during a freelance project. Heck my situation was worse. The boss and his whole team of 6 members were like an expired drug who couldn't even read the docs of a framework or language and would get excited and choose a framework in an (unstable) ver 0.1 for production env. Everytime I had to tell/explain the right way of doing things I had to explain to boss+6 guys. So I hit upon two options.Let him run/test the web app or QUITOption-1: LET HIM RUN/test the webapp. When errors pop he'll surely come to you. Then explain the right way to him and don't tell him anything more than what he needs to know about the error. This is peaceful and will make your boss more happy that he has a guy who's capable of doing stuff. Days later you'll be called the hero who could do things the right way (yeah like Hancock coming thru the door and not breaking a wall to get in). I chose this. So now whenever there's anything wrong they call me for help even to this day long after the project is over.Option-2: QUIT. There's no way you can work with these guys if you can't convince them.I would suggest choosing the first option. Means a lot professionally. |
How do you deal with a boss who is stuck in the past? | zackola: Can you give some examples of patterns that show up in your bosses code that you disagree with? Let us judge them too.How many other developers are on this team with you and your boss? Maybe you can get them to stand up and say something too.Maybe you can get together with your team and do peer reviews once a week. Try reaching out to your boss about a function/module you have written that you know needs improvement and seek his opinions on what could be done. You have to start thinking of him as a peer who is trying to help create a successful business and not as an antagonist to beautiful code.Your code might be pretty, but if beautifying code takes the place of bug fixing and adding features needed to sell a product or service, it doesn't matter. |
How do you deal with a boss who is stuck in the past? | babo: There is more than one way to do it. Design patterns, basic principles of style, all of these are only soft recommendations, don't mistify them. Try to cope with the existing code, probably you will learn from the old fart. |
How do you deal with a boss who is stuck in the past? | Angostura: I'd like to hear your boss' point of view before jumping to judgement.... and I think you could probably do with hearing his point of view too. |
Do you think primarily in English? | aristus: When thinking about numbers and music, it's primarily colors and shapes. Every tone and digit has a different color-shape. "Blue notes" really are blue, flats are brown, harmony is a slurry-grey pattern that's hard to describe. :)I think primarily in English or Spanish words, then pictures when I am ramping up into a problem. I'll start talking then stop, and my hands reach for a pad & pen of their own accord.Once I'm "in", my thinking is not really words and not really pictures. It's... I don't know. There is a saying: when you want to find a lost horse, you have to think like the horse. Ideally I identify with whatever it is and I "think like the horse". Afterwards I discover/rationalize explanations for it. |
How do you deal with a boss who is stuck in the past? | LogicHoleFlaw: I'm not trying to be rude, but some of tension in this situation seems to be caused by a clash of egos as much as by any technical deficiency.In my current employment, there are many procedural deficiencies as well as technical weaknesses. But one thing that really is done right is that every piece of code that is merged into the source base is peer reviewed before it is committed. I'm a strong technical member of the team, and when I started I thought quite a bit of myself. Even so, I wrote things which were potentially confusing to my teammates. Not confusing because they are incapable of understanding, but just not having the sort of clarity which would make later maintenance easier for whoever would be tasked with it.When I got some hard questions in code reviews I felt a bit defensive at first, but once I swallowed my pride (tastes like crow!) and realized that I really am working with talented teammates who want us all to succeed, something clicked. I was teaching others new techniques and idioms, and they were teaching me about teamwork and the importance of writing for other humans as well as myself and the computer. I do sometimes end up doing major structural refactoring of existing code, but there's always both a good business and technical reason for it. I will say that I put in my own taste and style, but there's nothing wrong with that so long as everyone can understand it.In your situation, try hard to focus on the human element here instead of just the technical element. Have some respect for the people you work with - you should all be bringing a variety of experiences and knowledge to the table. I find it hard to believe that your boss is just trapped in the past and can't understand modern web programming. The fact that he chose Ruby and Rails for this effort indicates to me that he really is open to new ideas and opportunities. Hey, it's not CGI! You certainly have an opportunity to teach here, but you also might have an opportunity to learn something. Try to sit down and have an ego-free conversation about what's going on and see if you can find a deeper reason. Especially in a small startup, resentment and defensiveness can only undermine your collective ability to succeed. You need every strength that you can call upon in such an environment. |
Micro-payments | jamess: There is one and only one such mechanism that exists, reverse-billed SMS. Even then, the fees payable will often amount to some 25% of the total. What are you going to be selling? If its something you are expecting lots of repeat custom, then you could do as all the music vendors do and aggregate bills over some period of time. Or, if that is a bit too risky sounding for you, have customers charge their accounts up with credit first before shopping. |
How do you deal with a boss who is stuck in the past? | lacker: First, you need to be nicer. Calling him "stuck in the past" and saying he doesn't get "basic principles" or "basic OOP" is needlessly insulting.Second, stop blaming him. You're working for him, so obviously he has done some things right and deserves some respect. If you understand something he doesn't, it's your responsibility to explain and educate. If he is "very defensive" then perhaps you are bringing issues up in too confrontational a way.Finally, be patient. Find some code that could be improved with better adherence to Ruby style, work up a changelist that cleans it up, and politely send it to your boss suggesting that you think this style has advantages, would he mind if you fixed it up? Show him how your style has advantages, point by point, and over time you will earn respect. |
Do you think primarily in English? | apu: I find that I use English for everything except 2 major classes of thoughts:1. Art. Specifically, if I'm trying to compare some work of art (music/movie/art), I have a virtual "media player/audiovisual search engine" in my mind that quickly lets me locate other works that are similar, related, or otherwise relevant. This similarity is often on the basis of the emotional content of the work, but I find that I don't need to put the concept into words to locate it. To use your example, if I'm looking at something that provokes empathy, I'll think of other works that provoke the same emotion, but without ever thinking of the word 'empathy' (or any synonyms/etc.).2. Science. If I'm trying to understand some scientific concept or if I'm working on something new (I'm a researcher), I find that I make almost no progress unless I can form a mental picture of the problem. Only after creating this picture can I do anything. Then most frequently I'll imagine myself "flying" through this mental model, tweaking it as I take into account various other factors, sometimes destroying parts and rebuilding, etc. Usually, I will come back to this same model over and over until finally I understand the concept or come up with some new realization. |
Do you think primarily in English? | thomasmallen: Native english speaker, but I've known Spanish long enough that sometimes I think in Spanish. |
How do you deal with a boss who is stuck in the past? | bigbang: Whenever there is an argument over whether something should be refactored, dont call a meeting(if it happens now). Just email with pros and cons(to as much detail as possible in a digestable way). Its easier to get lost in a conversation, but with email I feel its easier to convince and once pros and cons are listed for each of them, there is really a no need for argument. Usually something will come out as an obvious solution. Just my 2c |
Do you think primarily in English? | rjett: Does anyone know if there is anything open-source that is comparative to Rosetta Stone? I would like to learn Spanish and also brush up on my Italian a bit. I mention Rosetta Stone because I hear that it's the best language learning tool out there but I'm open to other learning systems as well. |
How do you deal with a boss who is stuck in the past? | Tichy: I wonder if there are two programmers in the world who can agree on the best way to solve a problem. |
Why bookmark when you can keep the text too? (check out my web clippings app) | hedgehog: Hello all,A while back I got frustrated with the folders full of disorganized bookmarks I'd accumulated. After some thought about how to solve it I built an app that's working well for me. I'm soliciting feedback to see what I can do to make it work well for other people.clipng is based on the following ideas:- I'm usually only interested in part of a page (a particular insightful piece, code snippet, recipe, etc)
- If I could collect the good parts all in one place then I could tag them and make them searchable.To implement this I made the following:- A bookmarklet that, when clicked, collects the current selection and some information about the current page (I call it a "clipping")
- A site that handles tagging and indexing for your clippings (I used App Engine)Enjoy,-Choong |
How do you deal with a boss who is stuck in the past? | azanar: I'd have to understand more about your situation to really give any sort of advice. A few questions come to mind:1. Do you believe what the startup is doing is worthwhile? How much of what keeps you there is just a need for a job, and how much is due to you wanting this job in particular?2. Does his code function correctly? Is it overly fragile? Has it proved to be a maintainability problem in the past? Have others complained about your boss's coding style and defensiveness? If so, what action have they taken?3. Have others commented on how you approach your boss in these instances? Do you seem overly abrasive? Do you stand your ground when he disagrees, or do you give in as soon as he does? If the latter, do you think you would face severe consequences if you did stand your ground?Lots of questions, but narrowing down what is important to you will help me and others give you better advice. |
How do you deal with a boss who is stuck in the past? | jcapote: I've been the in the same situation(s), and I just left when I couldn't handle it anymore. |
What are your web app ideas? | jamess: Not precisely a web app per se, but a product I'd really like to see someone produce. It seems to me that the BBC's iPlayer sets the standard for TV stations broadcasting their content over the internet. They have flash streaming at reasonable quality, plus various species of download for different platforms including portable devices, and they don't discriminate a huge amount by operating system.What I think would be wonderful would be if someone would produce a similar system packaged up and ready to be installed at any TV station. Just add a few racks of machines for encoding. Hell, if you were going for real shiny-shiny, you might even do the encoding "in the cloud" on EC2 or somesuch.I'm not entirely sure how much money you could make doing this, but its certainly an idea. |
What are your web app ideas? | CatDancer: You may find http://www.sagemath.org/ helpful for your project, if you haven't seen it already ^_^ |
Do you think primarily in English? | swamperfox: If you have time check out Korzybski's general semantics. NLP also deals with this. One of the classics is Benjamin Worf's 'Language, thought and reality.
Generally speaking, it seems we describe the world to ourselves with internal dialogue and then react to the words of our description rather than responding directly to reality. |
Can you recommend a blog writer or service? | noodle: well, if you're interested, i might be able to help. i can write reasonably well but don't have anything to write about.drop me an email (in my profile) and perhaps we can work something out. |
Can you recommend a blog writer or service? | rms: http://forums.digitalpoint.com/forumdisplay.php?s=148http://forums.digitalpoint.com/forumdisplay.php?f=102 |
Where do you buy hosting space from ? | omarchowdhury: Softlayer, ThePlanet, Mediatemple |
What are your web app ideas? | ieatpaste: http://startupskunkworks.blogspot.com/I'd be happy to discuss anything. |
Where do you buy hosting space from ? | noodle: this is the the obligatory slicehost post |
Best online brokerage? | noodle: zecco, although you need to deposit more than $800 to get the free trades. don't have to actually make use of the full deposit amount, though |
Where do you buy hosting space from ? | liangzan: linode, frro.net |
Is there a better way to find out if there are competitors than Googling for it? | nreece: You can list 3-5 general terms (keywords) that best describe your concept, and search for those keywords in Google to find anything close to your idea. |
Best online brokerage? | pmorici: What about Scottrade, trades are cheap and minimums are low...http://www.scottrade.com/ |
Is there a better way to find out if there are competitors than Googling for it? | jwilliams: Well - I'd recommend that you use all the channels that you'd expect a prospective customer to use.If you'd expect Google to be a main channel - then any serious (established) competitor should be represented there. |
Best online brokerage? | mdolon: A lot of my friends swear by ThinkOrSwim, you might want to check them out.http://www.thinkorswim.com/ |
Where do you buy hosting space from ? | ctingom: Hostnexus. |
Is there a better way to find out if there are competitors than Googling for it? | pjharrin: Crunchbase.com very very helpful |
Best online brokerage? | pjharrin: Make sure you don't qualify as a pattern day trader (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pattern_day_trader)Unless you are looking for education services or becoming a day trade, any discount broker will do. As with most things the more you pay the more you get, ie. thinkorswim isn't the cheapest but they focus on education |
Is there a better way to find out if there are competitors than Googling for it? | thesethings: Though for different purposes (usually just research or shopping tools), I use these Google phrases almost every day:"better than $thing""like $thing""same as $thing" |
Is there a better way to find out if there are competitors than Googling for it? | teej: If you can find at least one, spyfu.com can be pretty helpful in finishing out your list. |
Do you think primarily in English? | known: I speak 7 languages. Whenever I am in company with this specific linguistic group I start thinking in their culture. |
Are these scam sites? | agentbleu: looks like a good scam:) |
Is there a better way to find out if there are competitors than Googling for it? | SwellJoe: If Google doesn't know about them, they are not a threat to you yet. Launch fast, get customers, and move fast. You'll then be the one to beat. I'm not saying you don't want to know about early stage competitors...but I've been amused to note over the years that 90% of my "new competitors" have disappeared within a year or two.My first company actually had a company that hired me to do some of their development work (it was on Open Source software, so I would get the benefits, as well...they were just paying me to do something I was going to do anyway). They had several million in VC money. They also hired my current co-founder to do UI work and some other stuff (he did contract work for me on a regular basis back then). Clearly they'd read all about what I was doing, since I was never too shy about how I was building my products and my company, and decided to spend their way into the market in direct competition with me. I let them (though I didn't let them use my name, or my company name, in any way to imply endorsement or involvement in their products). They were out of my market in less than a year, and completely dead within 24 months.What I'm saying is that competition is rarely as scary as they seem, so don't obsess over it too much. It can make you give up on a good idea and something you're enthusiastic about before you really even know anything. |
Are these scam sites? | dfranke: Seems like an odd conspiracy theory. Robo-dialers are nothing new and I haven't noticed any increase in my receiving them. Any evidence for this? |
problem is, web apps can't act as clients? | petercooper: You're looking for OAuth :) http://oauth.net/ - OAuth provides you with "valet keys" (the non technical term!) so that third party apps can go into other apps for you to do just what is necessary.Twitter is looking to implement OAuth (supposedly they already have in some regard, but it's not in public use). |
Micro-payments | massness: I'm trying to setup a website that will allow a small community to sell stuff to each other, but to make the whole thing viable I need to figure out a way to take a micro-payment from the seller at the time they upload their listing. I'm not too keen on the SMS model, the aggregate billing option is one that I might end up taking. Just thought that micro-payments would have been a solved issue by now and easy to implement. |
Are these scam sites? | ericb: I don't think the math supports your conspiracy theory. Website ads do not pay enough to support robo dialer + real phone calls + electricity + risk of getting sued. |
What is your blog? | jaxn: http://jaxn.orgI have been blogging since 2001, but it has not been the most consistent endeavor. The topical focus has shifted several times and the frequency of posts ebbs and flows. But I enjoy it. |
Do you think primarily in English? | Restructure: I'm a visual learner, and I think in terms of images, even when programming. I am also decent at drawing/painting.The concept of "empathy" makes me think of mirror neurons and makes me imagine nervous systems of human bodies. |
problem is, web apps can't act as clients? | mattmaroon: There have been services like that for eBay. I used to use one that did auto listings for me. I think Auctomatic used to do something of the sort too. |
Are these scam sites? | omarchowdhury: You are completely wrong to think that websites that list phone numbers and other people's histories with said phone numbers are perpetrating the actual calls. Site such as WTFcalls.com are only trying to seek traffic through ranking for phone number keywords in Google (because it is very easy to do so - those phone numbers occur on very few other pages on the web).If you look at this example page:http://wtfcalls.com/649-200You can see that WTFCalls has automatically generated every conceivable phone number in the United States - in an attempt to rank highly for those numbers in search engines. WTFcalls.com receives around 200,000+ unique visitors monthly, almost all from search engines. Their ad revenue from Adsense should be a sustaining amount.Not bad for simply creating a script that makes a page template optimized (to rank in search engines) for every known phone number (example: http://wtfcalls.com/n/649-254-1011).I put a random number into Google:http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&client=firefox-a&...Look who came up first! WTFcalls.comRest assured. |
Best online brokerage? | jay888: I would recommend Wells Trade. If you have more than 25K to invest, then you get 100 free trades. Very good customer service |
What is your blog? | shaunxcode: http://commonphp.blogspot.com - started to document working through common lisp in php, slowly turned into a documentation of giving up on php and writing a new language... sort of. |
What is your blog? | ddemchuk: http://www.layeredthoughts.comJust got started on it about a month ago...mainly tech, programming, business stuff, with some random life tossed in. I've been using MindManager to map out new posts and it has been great, makes it really easy to keep your research organized. |
What is your blog? | mdolon: I blog at http://monfx.com/ and http://devgrow.com/Nothing serious yet. |
What is your blog? | pjharrin: My blog is at http://www.peterharrington.info mostly marketing, tech and entrepreneur stuff |
Help me brainstorm ideas for an Open Access Workshop | many: I have no idea what you're on to, but it sounds interesting (er.. uh.. you sound enthusastic (if i can pull that through the radar))You know, scrapbooking is fundamentally simple, and I can fish up an idea I had several months ago for scrapbooking. The notion is "like Etsy" but more interactive, where users can assemble their own stuff from stock materials, or other etsy-like users. I ran it by a serious authority and he said it could work. The stopping point at the time was a steep cost of developing a nice flash gui for the 'interactive (scrapbooking / jewelry-making) stuff"I live in The Midwest Corridor, as well. Talk to me if we can work together. |
What is your blog? | spif: Post most of my stuff on my startups blog: http://blog.soocial.comI gave up on personal blogging when I started Soocial. |
Feedback on my Weekend Project | halo: Looks pretty good. There's not really much to it to comment on - attractive design but fairly generic Web 2.0 these days so I'm fairly immune.Hardly a deal-breaker, but if you redesign at some point I'd consider making the navigation smaller so people don't have to scroll to play games if they have 800px vertical resolution (such as on a typical 13" laptop).Your images don't display under "link to us", you might want to fix that.I think there's a bit too much on the front page - if I were you I'd consider dropping the tabs near the bottom, which seem largely unnecessary to me.Perhaps you could also offer points for referrals to try and make it go viral? Although, admittedly, it might encourage people to abuse the system.Edit: One more minor thing, your "More Features" link is a little ugly and doesn't match the rest of the site, and clicking the clicking "Sign up" and "View Prizes" in the pop-up doesn't work correctly. |
Feedback on my Weekend Project | many: Only looking at the site, it seems you could do better than make me wonder what "real prizes" might refer to, before signing up. Probably emphasize the reality up front.Now, after reading your entry here. . .Well, hm. I think the only question is: how well are you doing compared to your friends? |
Feedback on my Weekend Project | many: oh, maybe I'm wrong to block ads & popups. too real for me. |
Feedback on my Weekend Project | babul: I actually like it. It may not have many good games on there yet, but this works to keep things simple and you can tell what you are going to get in each section and page quickly and accurately.League tables are always a good idea, so good to see that. Plus having community forums would be good too. It would help if you allowed feedback on games as an indication to new visitors what is popular or fun.Also, for new visitors, why not try something different but fun such as a quick personality test that can be used to then recommend some games. |
Where do you buy hosting space from ? | kngspook: Linode, currently, thinking about switching or augmenting it with WebFaction.I've used WebFaction before, and they're really good. But they're geared a little more towards frameworks like Django and Rails (but naturally, they do PHP too). They're really quite good. Pretty solid email set up too (which is important to me). |
valuing a non-existent company | ksvs: Why not skirt the question and take the funding on a convertible note? |
valuing a non-existent company | jaxn: I heard an Angel say "pick a number between 3 and 5 million and move on". I think the point is that the investors need enough equity to have a good upside (50x $) and the company needs to maintain enough equity to be motivated (the majority).So, if you are shooting for the fences, how much do you think the company can be worth in 5 years? What percentage will give the angel 50x their investment?I am looking forward to what others have to say. |
Gift ideas for hacker types? | p858snake: Although there a tad old you could look at http://paulstamatiou.com/2006/12/04/5-gifts-for-the-techie-i... and http://paulstamatiou.com/2007/12/17/stammys-holiday-2007-gif... and use them as a basic guide. Although i do like the idea of the Nalgene bottles <http://www.nalgene-outdoor.com/store/SearchResult.aspx?Categ...; |
How to package this algorithm? | andrewljohnson: Sounds like you're going to be violating some Terms of Service that users of a software like adBlock skirt because they're just private citizens.Verdict: if your software is good, you'll get your pants sued off. But, I assume since you didn't post a link to a demo, you're a business guy with an idea and not much code. So I doubt you'll have many users, much less legal problems! |
How to package this algorithm? | fizx: "Wrapper induction" (Do a Google Scholar search for it) has been around for a while (Kushmerick, 1997). It's used by search engines, etc, quite successfully, but I don't know of anyone who is able to make a living selling it standalone.Independent of that, I don't think it's enough of a value-add for me to pay for, plus, you're running into copyright concerns left and right. |
How to package this algorithm? | lacker: If you copy other peoples' content and host it from your servers, that's copyright infringement. It doesn't matter if you call it an RSS feed or if you just copy it exactly.What you could do is offer people software that downloads web pages but strips the ads. This could be a neat feature of an RSS reader, or perhaps a plugin to another RSS reader, but I doubt you will be able to sell this on its own. |
How to package this algorithm? | m_eiman: Instapaper.com does this, more or less. Their basic service is free, but they (he actually, unless he's expanded lately) sell an iPhone app with additional usability features and offline reading.It's a really useful thing, but probably a bit shady in the legal area with ToSes. |
How to package this algorithm? | jfornear: Regarding subscription pricing, if you are going to charge and you want to keep the price under $10/mo, charge at least $5.99/mo because a) you can get away with it, and b) $3.99/mo could make your product seem cheap. IMO $5.99 is close to the cost of a fast food meal, which most people don't hesitate when faced with.I don't know how much thought you put into the $3.99/mo, but there is a lot of research out there that supports pricing higher for reasons none other than to create the perception of value. Interesting topic to look into, either way. |
How to package this algorithm? | markessien: The hardest sell to make is a monthly subscription service. It's easier to sell yearly or one-time. |
What is your blog? | DarkShikari: http://x264dev.multimedia.cx/ |
know any good browsergames? | ErrantX: ikariam.com (I play that one day to day and it is a nice distraction :))Gameforge (the makers of IK) do others too: such as Ogame (which is similar).I've not come across a hacker friendly one sadly: market? |
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